projects

I have vivid memories from my childhood of summers passed in the parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that my family once called home. Surely, I’m not the only one that is blessed (or burdened) by such reveries. Like many other victims of diaspora, people from throughout the Balkans region that were forced from their homes by the horrible war of the 1990s seem to exhibit a strong, collective nostalgia for their homeland. What more, from my experience it seems as if this nostalgia often revolves around a specific element of this homeland that is becoming difficult to find elsewhere: the region’s ample freshwater resources, and the bounty of natural and cultural heritage they give birth to. I remember the gushing gelid torrents of my father’s mountain village, the vast, wild forests that emanated from their banks, and the mesmerizing turquoise streams flowing through so many Bosnian cities. In the mountains surrounding Sarajevo, my family would return to a specific moss-covered spout poking out of a small crevice from which we could gather the cleanest, tastiest water and bottle it up for our weekly needs. Hand in hand, my friends and I would create a human chain to help each other cross the creek’s strong current. When I think about BiH I think about fresh water, and seemingly I’m not the only one.
 
In the last few decades, more than three thousand hydroelectric power projects have been presented for the Western Balkans (WB) region, with those already built or currently in construction already posing major threats to entire fluvial ecosystems and the multitude of communities that depend on them. From Slovenia to Albania, rivers that once flowed freely are being obstructed, polluted, appropriated, and the people that still depend on them deprived of their most valuable resource. Research suggests that 30% of the Balkan’s rivers are uncontaminated and that close to 50% present intact ecosystems hosting locally endemic species and levels of biodiversity largely unequaled in the rest of the Europe. Yet, with amounting evidence both locally and globally of such projects ending in corruption, profiteering and large scale damage to nature and society, they continue to take place throughout the region.

These are just a few of the many things I learned this past summer while participating in a set of workshops conducted by Fondacija ACT, and Save the Blue Heart of Europe, the coalition of NGOs of which it is member. Along with other regional actors, these initiatives are battling against all odds to protect the region’s rivers and advocate for the communities that depend on these rivers to regain their place as heeded civil actors in the decision-making fundamental to their livelihoods and wellbeing. As highlighted by Fondacija ACT cofounder and director Lejla Kusturica, throughout BiH, rivers have long acted as a central figure of community wellbeing in the Balkans. Still today, in a region scarred by war and its wake, rivers continue to provide sustenance, inspiration, recreation and repose. As further elaborated by Lejla, the fight to protect these rivers has now taken on new significance. By drawing in Bosnians from all walks of life, the movement has become a medium for unity and solidarity over a common cause, thus countering the deep-seated ethnic divisions still very much alive in BiH.

Though hydroelectric power is considered a renewable energy source and an important contributor to the green energy transition, this isn’t always the case. To begin with, we must underscore that all conventional energy sources, renewable or not, have varying degrees of negative social and environmental impact, and in turn, are more or less sustainable. Oftentimes with hydropower projects, the amount of green energy generated relative to the negative impacts on biodiversity and land, far outweighs how the same equation applies to other renewable energy sources (wind, solar, wave, etc). Hydroelectric power projects ascend the scale of sustainability when they undergo the strict impact assessments (hydrological studies, environmental impact assessments, and several others) required by most governments, and are undertaken with the consensus of local communities. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case with such projects in the WB region. As noted by Pavlakovič et al. note in their 2022 research, in the WB region, these impact assessments are conducted in a debatable manner, and when they are, results are often not communicated clearly to the relevant public. For these reasons, there is often a deep distrust on behalf of the public with regards to these projects and those implementing them. Indeed, Pavlakovič goes on to mention that, “The assessment of the acceptability of existing SHPPs [small hydropower plants]... showed that 74% of SHPPs [in the WBs] cannot be considered acceptable from the aspect of the location where they were built, and from the aspect of the impact on the quality of life of the local population.” Far too often, these projects become strangled by corruption at the local and international levels, and are undertaken by large foreign contractors with little-to-no consideration for the prosperity of communities and environment they impact.
Within the context of BiH and the WB overall, most projects cannot be considered sustainable and are largely spurned by the inhabitants of the areas in which they take place. With very little being done by BiH’s fragmented and impotent government to protect its environment and people from these threats, grassroots activism steps in.
 
The growing movement created and sustained by the aforementioned organizations, along with a host of other activists, emphasizes a number of key themes. Amongst these, the main themes are the importance of thoroughly planned approaches to sustainable development, countering corruption and the local and international levels, advocating for lower-impact renewable energy options, and the inclusion of the relevant public in major decision-making. Thanks to the work being done by these groups and valiant individuals such as Robert Oroz, Oliver Arapovič and the women of Kruščica, at least some of BiH’s rivers can continue to flow freely. “Pusti me da tečem,” meaning “Let me flow” has become the rallying call of this movement, one that has brought home multiple significant victories such as that accomplished on the Bunski Canals outside Mostar, or on the small, particularly fragile Neretvica river. Yet, not all instances of this activism have ended unscathed.

A particularly malicious case of violence against the efforts of peaceful protestors took place in 2017 in the remote Bosnian valley of Kruščica. The protest began when a group of over fifty women set up a human blockade, waiting day and night, summer and winter, for close to a year in a shack on a small rural bridge so as to prevent the bulldozers sent by project developers from crossing it and destroying their beloved Kruščica river. On the 24th of August, a special unit of security forces allegedly commissioned by the project developers was sent in to intervene. Facing the intimidation head-on, around 50 women staged a peaceful sitting protest on the bridge. As the special unit arrived, a command was given and its agents proceeded to brutally beating the women as they sat courageously defending their river. Though particularly infamous, this acts as only one of the innumerable cases of backlash that the movement to protect the Balkan’s rivers has received from powers at be. Yet despite the threats, beatings, and frequent failures, the movement continues to flow, steadfast and growing.

Words by Tarim Contin-Kennedy and Rosa Franjic